THE ROLE OF PRACTICES IN INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE THE EVOLUTION OF DOCTORAL PROGRAMS IN FRANCE 1990 – 2008

Whether based on the figure of institutional entrepreneur or the dynamic of social movements, models of institutional change have yet to solve the paradox of embedded agency. Studying institutional change from the angle of practices allows introducing a channel by which seeds of change enter the field without modifying logics at first. Political entrepreneurship or grassroots initiative will play a critical role in institutional change as long as they can rely on existing practices. Evolution of conditions to perform day to day activities introduces new problems; solutions trigger the development of new activities. Routinization of new activities leads the emergence of new practices. Non-adoption of practices hinders institutional change. Practices thus inspire, support and limit institutional change. Basing our observations from a case study of the French Doctorate defined as an institution, shifting from research and study to professionalizing diploma, we build a process model of institutional change integrating the dynamic of practices.

Dynamic Algorithms and Asymptotic Theory for Lp-norm Data Analysis

The focus of this dissertation is the development of outlier-resistant stochastic algorithms for Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the derivation of novel asymptotic theory for Lp-norm Principal Component Analysis (Lp-PCA). Modern machine learning and signal processing applications employ sensors that collect large volumes of data measurements that are stored in the form of data matrices, that are often massive and need to be efficiently processed in order to enable machine learning algorithms to perform effective underlying pattern discovery. One such commonly used matrix analysis technique is PCA. Over the past century, PCA has been extensively used in areas such as machine learning, deep learning, pattern recognition, and computer vision, just to name a few. PCA\u27s popularity can be attributed to its intuitive formulation on the L2-norm, availability of an elegant solution via the singular-value-decomposition (SVD), and asymptotic convergence guarantees. However, PCA has been shown to be highly sensitive to faulty measurements (outliers) because of its reliance on the outlier-sensitive L2-norm. Arguably, the most straightforward approach to impart robustness against outliers is to replace the outlier-sensitive L2-norm by the outlier-resistant L1-norm, thus formulating what is known as L1-PCA. Exact and approximate solvers are proposed for L1-PCA in the literature. On the other hand, in this big-data era, the data matrix may be very large and/or the data measurements may arrive in streaming fashion. Traditional L1-PCA algorithms are not suitable in this setting. In order to efficiently process streaming data, while being resistant against outliers, we propose a stochastic L1-PCA algorithm that computes the dominant principal component (PC) with formal convergence guarantees. We further generalize our stochastic L1-PCA algorithm to find multiple components by propose a new PCA framework that maximizes the recently proposed Barron loss. Leveraging Barron loss yields a stochastic algorithm with a tunable robustness parameter that allows the user to control the amount of outlier-resistance required in a given application. We demonstrate the efficacy and robustness of our stochastic algorithms on synthetic and real-world datasets. Our experimental studies include online subspace estimation, classification, video surveillance, and image conditioning, among other things. Last, we focus on the development of asymptotic theory for Lp-PCA. In general, Lp-PCA for p\u3c2 has shown to outperform PCA in the presence of outliers owing to its outlier resistance. However, unlike PCA, Lp-PCA is perceived as a ``robust heuristic\u27\u27 by the research community due to the lack of theoretical asymptotic convergence guarantees. In this work, we strive to shed light on the topic by developing asymptotic theory for Lp-PCA. Specifically, we show that, for a broad class of data distributions, the Lp-PCs span the same subspace as the standard PCs asymptotically and moreover, we prove that the Lp-PCs are specific rotated versions of the PCs. Finally, we demonstrate the asymptotic equivalence of PCA and Lp-PCA with a wide variety of experimental studies

A Novel and Sustainable Approach in Treating Restaurant Wastewater with Kapok Fiber through a Compact Biodegradable Oil Absorption Filter System

Restaurant typically discharges fats, oil and grease (FOG) as well as surfactant ( dishwashing detergent) - containing wastewater directly into the waterways that is generated by their daily kitchen activities, for which there is currently no acceptable technology due to its high capital cost, large space requirement to operate, extensive maintenance activities requirement, possesses detrimental hazard to the environment and fail to remove FOG to meet discharge standards. As a result, oil sorption efficiency and hydrophobic-oleophilic characteristics of an agricultural product, Kapok (Cieba pentandra) will be thoroughly examined in this paper for its feasibility as an absorbent medium in order to treat restaurant wastewater where the aim is to develop a compact biodegradable absorption filter. The objective of this project is to; (I) Study the effect of various packing densities of Kapok filter and inlet flow rate on the cooking oil absorption efficiency and outlet flow rate, (2) To design a compact biodegradable oil absorption filter based on the chosen packing density to curb the current problem faced in restaurant wastewater and (3) To study the effect of cooking oil and surfactant concentrations on the filtrate turbidity and filtration efficiency. Based on the results obtained, the best possible packing density that should be applied for the Kapok filter design under gravitational pressure gradient would be 0.02 g/cm3 since it contributes to better outlet flow rate, high filtration efficiency (96%) with the least filtrate turbidity and has larger size of the effective flow channel and area to entrap the emulsified oil. Based on UV Spectrometer test, the result shows that the surfactant could not be separated from the water-surfactant mixture. However, with the presence of surfactant in water-oil mixture the kapok filter system is capable to separate oil efficiently as surfactant enable to break oil molecules to smaller suspended droplets (emulsion) which results in higher filtration efficiency. Kapok has shown a great potential as an natural oil sorbent in treating restaurant wastewater (FOG) due the fact that it is hydrophobicoleophilic in nature

Incremental and Adaptive L1-Norm Principal Component Analysis: Novel Algorithms and Applications

L1-norm Principal-Component Analysis (L1-PCA) is known to attain remarkable resistance against faulty/corrupted points among the processed data. However, computing L1-PCA of “big data” with large number of measurements and/or dimensions may be computationally impractical. This work proposes new algorithmic solutions for incremental and adaptive L1-PCA. The first algorithm computes L1-PCA incrementally, processing one measurement at a time, with very low computational and memory requirements; thus, it is appropriate for big data and big streaming data applications. The second algorithm combines the merits of the first one with additional ability to track changes in the nominal signal subspace by revising the computed L1-PCA as new measurements arrive, demonstrating both robustness against outliers and adaptivity to signal-subspace changes. The proposed algorithms are evaluated in an array of experimental studies on subspace estimation, video surveillance (foreground/background separation), image conditioning, and direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation

Design And Development Of A Multimode Cricket Bowling Machine

This research was about the development of a multimode cricket bowling machine. The purpose of the machine was to emulate the ball deliveries of real cricket bowlers during training. Furthermore, the machine could execute continuous ball deliveries for the batsmen when the bowlers are not available. Besides that, past studies had not disclosed some of criteria related to the development of the bowling machine such as effects of wet ball on velocity and speed relationship between the ball and the wheels. In response, a multimode cricket bowling machine was fabricated and its performance analysed. Based on the kinematics of the bowling deliveries, the design requirements of the machine were made prior to fabrication. As for the control system, a rule-based microcontroller system was constructed to change the wheel’s angular speed. The three major experiments for analysing the performance were ball velocity, distance, and spin. Experimental results showed that ball velocities were 17.53 m/s and 19.78 m/s under slow and medium speed mode with best wheel pressure of 6.25 psi on both wheels. The data consistency was compared using coefficient of variation (COV). From the velocity results, the speed ratio between the ball’s translational velocity and wheel’s linear velocity was obtained. Due to the steep speed ratio gradient, the ball velocity declined after the wheels achieved an angular speed of 2000 rpm at 6.25 psi. Moreover, the trajectory results of the mathematical model simulated was comparable to the measured ball length with error of 0.67 %, 9.31 %, and 12.49 % for slow-horizontal, medium-horizontal, and medium-rolled tests respectively. For the ball spin experiments, the speed ratio equation was used to estimate the ball spin rate with 12.32 % error. Based on the estimation, the ball spin rate decreased as the wheel’s angular speed increased. Furthermore, simulations for the ball trajectory with spin applied were conducted and analysed. The simulations had shown that the ball spin produced ball trajectory effects in line with the implemented rule-based system but the magnitude of the effects was low due to the speed ratio relationship and also the initial ball release angle from the horizontal plane

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF ENDOSULPHAN

Endosulfan is an easily available insecticide and mainly used for agricultural purposes. Hence most of the villagers use endosulfan for committing suicide. The recent cases reported in toxicological laboratories show that suicide with endosulfan is increasing in these days. Endosulfan causes most degree of death because of its toxic effects. The toxicology division of forensic science laboratory plays vital role in analysis of poisons through Criminal Justice System. In every death case which is connected to the criminal justice system, the human viscera of deceased are sent to forensic sciences department for analysis.In a case report, the toxicology division received human viscera of a deceased from the forensic medicine department where a person was declared death after consuming endosulfan due to severe stomach pain. It was brought to toxicology division of forensic science laboratory where the type of poison was identified and estimated. Two methods such as thin layer chromatography and UV Visible spectrophotometry were adopted to analyse the human viscera. The forensic analysis includes solvent extraction, identification and estimation

Acid Attack on Reinforced Concrete Incorporated with Industrial Wastes

The study was conducted to evaluate the durable characteristics of Reinforced Concrete with silica fume and copper slag. The concrete mix design was done for M40 grade concrete with 7% silica fume as cement and 10 to 30% of copper slag as sand. Also the concrete contains the total fiber content 3% of steel, basalt and Alkali Resistant Glass Fiber (ARGF).  To study the durability characteristics such as resistance against acid, specimens were cast for different content of industrial wastes, fibers and it was compared with the control concrete.In this investigation an attempt was made in order to know the behavior of standard concrete of M40 grade specimens curing with acids such as HCl, and H2SO4 of 1% concentration at 28 days curing. Test results indicate that use of Silica fume, copper slag and fibers in concrete has improved the performance of concrete in durability aspec

Dynamic Analysis of Stick-Slip and Bit Bounce in Oilwell Drillstring

Drilling process consisting of drag bits which are used over drilling boreholes concerning generation along with research about oil and gas regularly undergo against caustic vibrations. As mentioned, vibrations will be able to cause the drag bit along with drillstring various breakdown concerning equipments. This project, a non-linear design concerning rotational and axial motions of drillstring plus bit act suggested. Furthermore, dynamics concerning two drive complexes considering translational along with rotational motions regarding drillstring is being advised. Regarding mentioned model, translational along with rotating motions concerning drag bit are reached in the process of result regarding total dynamic action. The consequences concerning numerous viable criteria covering dynamic action are considered including objective in producing an undisturbed drilling. Using appropriate selection concerning operational criteria can help in minimizing the consequences regarding bit-bounce also stick-slip. It is anticipated to aid lower time lost in drilling operation along with costs sustained because of caustic vibration